New Zealand offers new adventures for PLB grad Brandon Webster

By Caleb Hess | Mar 11, 2026 |

A man smiles at the camera while holding a mesh bag full of corn cobs. — Brandon Webster, a 2025 PLB graduate, is embarking on an adventure across the world and joining the Kiwifruit Breeding Center in New Zealand.

You graduated! What's next?

I have accepted a position as the quantitative geneticist for the Kiwifruit Breeding Centre (KBC) in New Zealand. My role is to help implement genomic tools and high-throughput phenotyping within their breeding program. With genomic prediction, I will use genetic data to guide breeding decisions. This approach is powerful because it can shorten the time between breeding cycles, conserve field resources, and broaden our insight into genetic diversity, empowering our decision-making when designing new cultivars.
High-throughput phenotyping involves leveraging sensors to predict traits of interest. For example, one of my responsibilities is to develop models that estimate the Brix values—a measure of dissolved solids, like sugars, found within liquids—of kiwifruit using near-infrared spectra.

Both aspects of my work rely on a strong foundation in statistics, data science, and plant biology.
Right now, I am waiting for my visa to be processed, which can take some time. While I wait, I am conducting remote work for KBC.

What first inspired you to study plant science?

It’s hard to point to a single moment when I became interested in plant science. Neither of my parents were academics or worked in agriculture, but I’ve always been curious. Even as an undergraduate, I wasn’t yet sure I would work with plants. I studied microbiology in northern California, surrounded by beautiful and unique plant communities in redwood forests and serpentine soils. It wasn't until I was about 22 that I learned about plant breeding through a research internship: learning how big data, genomics, and biology intersect in agriculture was when I solidified my career goals. I stopped seeing plants as a homogenous blur of green and began recognizing how they could be an outlet for research.

Why did you choose to study plant biology at MSU?

When I began my search for grad school, I limited my search for those with strong links to agriculture. Naturally, MSU was one of the schools on my list because of the huge diversity of plant research taking place here—not just agricultural but also foundational. MSU has a huge research environment and exposure to all the different areas helped me grow as a scientist. Ultimately, I chose MSU and the Plant Biology department because of the wealth of resources they offered to students compared to other schools I explored.

What motivates you as a researcher?

The best thing about research for me is finding solutions. It makes sense I would gravitate towards agriculture: there are many problems there which need solutions.

What's your philosophy on successful teaching and learning?

For teaching, my philosophy is to meet people where they are. Which, I guess, is to say that before teaching someone you have to learn about where they come from and where they are currently at. You have to understand why they want to learn. As a TA, I ran into many different types of students.

Some had great foundational knowledge, but others had gaps. Once all of these questions are answered, then I can be a better guide for their learning journey. I think it’s important to also have the awareness to identify those gaps in yourself. In graduate school, it is your job to become an expert in your research area. There is so much to learn, and as a graduate student you will be exposed to so much cool research. It is easy to get distracted, but you have to be able to identify and focus on the knowledge which is essential for your own research.

Do you have any advice for future students, or those who are just starting out?

If you are already a graduate student, then advice would be to always be thinking about how your knowledge and skills can be applied to the world at large. The best research is meaningless without the ability to communicate its value. In your graduate studies, you will become the expert in very specific topics so it will become your job to identify and answer what the most pressing questions are in that field.

Did you face unexpected challenges during your time as a graduate student? How did you overcome them?

I started in 2020 during the COVID lockdowns, so for the first two years I missed many of the communal aspects of graduate school. On top of that, my rotations didn’t go as well as I hoped, and I struggled to find an advisor until the end of my first year. It’s hard to say exactly how I overcame these challenges. At times it felt less like overcoming and more like just trying to keep my head above water.

Persistence doesn’t always feel like growth, but in retrospect, it’s probably one of the most important traits to have.

Were there opportunities which opened unexpected doors for you? How did you approach them?

Sometimes it is hard to predict what the outcome of an event would be. I find that life has the strangest way of surprising you. However, the world can’t surprise you if you don’t put yourself out there. Probably one of the key moments in my graduate career was giving a talk at a conference. I was so nervous about this talk that I memorized the whole 15 minute speech, word-for-word. But one of my main goals from this conference was to try and find an internship. So, I talked with all of the booths, I asked questions about opportunities they had and this led me securing an internship position. Later, my internship experience helped me to land a job with KBC. Things have a way of building upon themselves like that. One thing, even if it seems small—like approaching a booth at a conference to make small talk—can snowball into bigger things.